'How Evil Works' reveals America's 'blind spot'

I’ve eagerly read his blowout WND articles, and of course following “The Marketing of Evil,” I knew I liked and trusted him. In “How Evil Works,” in the lofty tradition of the veteran reporter, Kupelian connects the dots, compassionately and firmly taking us down the fast lane on a journey of inquiry through some very tough territory.

We privileged Americans have developed what Kupelian calls a “blind spot. … We don’t understand evil.” This means we cannot recognize its machinery despite the way judicial and political tyranny, sexual mayhem, political terrorism, and licit and illicit drug use victimize and ruin the lives of millions.

That is a serious “blind spot.”

I’m one of those people who cannot read a book without highlighting ideas and quotes I find important. My copy of Kupelian’s “Evil” is crammed with underlined passages, while I have disfigured his margins by scribbled stars, exclamation points and the words “good” and “great.”

Let me mention a few such “starred” items here.

Aristotle warned that big lies are more believable than little ones, since we ourselves might tell the little ones, but we cannot imagine telling whoppers. Kupelian reawakens us to the BIG liars in our midst, the liars who cause mass trauma.

Noting most governments, historically and cross culturally, “tend toward being tyrannical and predatory,” Kupelian provides a “whirlwind tour of the world’s governments” with solid statistics for his charge.

In North Korea, one man gets “torture and life in prison for possessing a radio.” In China, another communist “worker’s paradise,” bureaucrats enforce sterilization, abortion and infanticide, jailing roughly “500,000 people” without charge or trial and so on. Most governments, Kupelian notes, from the “Far East to Africa to South America are corrupt, predatory and power hungry.”

Here in the USA, government abuse grows daily. That is to be expected, says Kupelian. The closer we get to a vision of man without God, the closer we find ourselves without “strong moral principles.” Under those circumstances, humans are “free to lie, manipulate and steal in a multitude of obvious and subtle ways.”

I gave a large star to his William Penn quote: “If man is not governed by God, he will be ruled by tyrants.” After years of study, I know this to be well said and true.

It’s a roller-coaster ride in “Sexual Anarchy,” through teen “sexting” and middle-school hookups,” to the “ever increasing tolerance of adult-child sex.” I underlined the entire section documenting judicial insanity working its way into our courtrooms.

There are judges who express their personal delight with female teachers who sexually molest boys. Kupelian documents the reprehensible media glamorization of Mary Kay Letourneau who received glowing publicity and money after being impregnated by a boy student she later married.

One New Jersey judge ruled that a 43-year-old teacher who sexually violated a seventh-grade boy was guiltless because there was (illegal) “consent.” Another Kansas judge just wasn’t sure “sex with kids was really bad.” More and more of these kinds of “judges” are being trained by and funneled out of our law schools.

Kupelian rightly evaluates the “sexual misconduct in schools with the Catholic Church scandal.”

Why?

It turns out that the “physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more that 100 times the abuse by priests.” When it’s a female molester, too often the view is that the boy got lucky. One heartbreaking, stirring quote by Kupelian helps to clarify the subtle price paid by victims of a “sexy” teacher. The father of a boy molested by one such lawless woman reflected sorrowfully, she “took away my best friend, my hunting buddy. I can’t have him back now. He is gone.”

This father’s articulated grief is important for all of us to read, to know, to remember. For the potent emotions ensuing from such a crime usually go unspoken.

Tying up his argument for common sense and moral awareness, Kupelian quotes NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies founder Robert Jastrow, who summarized the nightmare for scientists with “faith in the power of reason.”

After having “scaled the mountain of ignorance,” says Jastrow, the scientist “pulls himself over the final rock” only to find “a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Score 10 for that nightmare!

For centuries, theologians and commoners have largely understood the verity of evil and have struggled to circumvent its noxious consequences.